To H. W. Bates   27 February [1862]1

Down Bromley Kent

Feb. 27th

My dear Sir

I have nothing to add to my morning’s scrawl,2 except to thank you heartily for giving me what information you could on domestic animals of Indians.— I am very glad to have the list & your remarks on the breeding of the animals tamed by the Indians.—3 Case of the Fowl will be useful to me.—4

I am very sincerely glad that Murray took same view of your M.S. that I did. I told him that I believed it would be the best Book of the class ever published.—5 Whether public approve highly or not, I am sure I shall not change my opinion.— If I can be of any use about Geology or about anything, pray ask me.—

My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

I am hard-at-work at proof-sheets of my little Orchid Book.—6

1
The year is established by the reference to the negotiations for the publication of Bates 1863 (see n. 5, below and letter to H. W. Bates, 27 [February 1862]).
3
The letter from Bates has not been found. In his letter to Bates of 13 January [1862], CD had asked whether any South American animals would breed when ‘long kept in confinement’. Bates commented on this subject in Bates 1863, 1: 99, 191–4, and 2: 113. Bates’s observations on the sterility of South American animals kept in captivity by Indian tribes were cited by CD in Variation 2: 150–6.
4
In Bates 1863, 1: 193 and 2: 112, Bates stated that curassow birds (large, turkey-like birds from South America) apparently did not breed when kept in captivity by South American Indians. CD cited this observation in Variation 2: 156.
6
CD sent most of the manuscript of Orchids to John Murray on 10 February 1862 (see letter to John Murray, 9 [February 1862]). See also letter to W. E. Darwin, 14 February [1862] and n. 15. Orchids was published on 15 May 1862 (Freeman 1977, p. 112).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3462,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3462